Privacy in surveys
Prefacing this article, I would like to note that completing surveys online is not necessarily synonymous with ‘privacy’. Sharing your preferences and opinions can allow companies to build a better image of who you are, and this can allow them to better target things towards you. In effect, this is how social networks make a profit from you. They calculate what you enjoy or are interested in by your interactions, and this allows them to target personalized ads towards you. These personalized advertisements are more likely to be clicked and are therefore more likely to earn them a profit.
Some survey companies are better and some are worse at sharing your data and since many of us never read the privacy policy it is important to accept that you are selling your preferences and opinions.
Introduction
With that out the way; in this post, I will run through two of my best options for earning small amounts of money online. I use both of these regularly. I do out of both prefer OnePulse, but I think they are both interesting and not too intense.
I’m sure if you are searching for surveys to do online, there are a range of different companies offering different things. One of the important things to work out is the time versus the earnings. It is necessary when trying to make money online not to undervalue your time and data. Some surveys take a long time with limited reward, aiming to make use of our desperation to make money in this capitalist world. I have tried my fair share of sites and wasted a lot of time making no money, so I hope this saves you the effort of searching through.
It is important to not spend time on worthless activities. I know that some reward surveys take hours to complete and still you make very little. Both of my options are slow earners. You will not be earning $10 each hour, but you will hopefully be earning over $10 per hour of work. This means your time spent will be valued and worthwhile.
OnePulse
This has been my go-to survey app for small amounts of income on the side. It will not earn you large amounts of money, but may allow you to earn enough to buy coffees, meals or other small items.
The thing I like about OnePulse is how quick the surveys are. It takes me about 30-60 seconds on average for each survey, and this will net me $0.33 (partly due to my level). This isn’t that much, but for the time I spend on it, I feel it is good. With some approximate maths, this adds up to roughly $26 for an hour of my time. It values my time and this is important to me. The surveys fill up quite quickly, so you have to respond to the notification almost as soon as it arrives, but if you don’t get onto one survey it is likely another one will be there soon. I probably manage to answer 2 surveys on a good day (but I could probably manage more if I was glued to my phone).
One bad thing about this app is that the payout limit is $20, so you have to earn a minimum of this before you can cash out to your PayPal. This isn’t bad if you are using this in the long term, but if you don’t think you’ll have the long term dedication to make it to this value, then it may be best not to start, otherwise you are effectively wasting time. The maximum I’ve seen on the leaderboards for a 7-day period is $10.00 whereas I have made $1.98 in my last 7-day period. You could make anywhere in between these values (or less) but for the time spent doing these surveys it is easy money. On the top earnings leaderboard (for all time), the maximum someone has made is $911.23 which although is not a fortune, it definitely demonstrates that this app does pay.
OnePulse views their surveys as a community rather than a paid surveys platform, and this community feeling does reflect through. It is nice to be able to see what other people answered at the end of your survey, and if you want you can answer ‘fun’ non-paid surveys to earn experience points. The more experience you have, the higher level you are and the more you earn per paid survey. Don’t expect this to be a massive increase. You won’t become rich by spending every hour of every day on this – probably.
You can view their website and download here if you feel like you want a go: https://www.onepulse.com/
Facebook Viewpoints
If you hear the word ‘Facebook’ and immediately curl up inside, then you may want to avoid giving them even more data about how you think. However, if you do manage to get past the initial repulsion to the company, then I think this app is a gem. It is a well known company so you can expect – hopefully – not to be scammed.
Every so often – not extremely regularly – there is a ‘programme’ that runs. Payouts of this are made to PayPal and the payout target is 1000 points which converts to $5. One of the tasks I completed was identifying the most similar product to another – probably to help them improve their advertisement recommendation. For about 10 minutes of my time, I earned 500 points. In the programme there were two of these tasks which got me to the withdrawal amount of 1000 points. By estimating the pay per hour this would be about $15 per hour which is also quite good.
You can view their website and download the app here: https://viewpoints.fb.com/